My Foray into My Midwestern Roots

Hi Ho! Hi Ho! It’s Researching I Shall Go . . .

Which is where I’ve been for the last week! As I was “googling” and searching for some information, I decided that some more “clean-up” of my gedcom was in order. Or more precisely – better documentation. Since I was doing research on the Goul (and for all of those not in the know – it rhymes with Owl!) line of my tree, that is where I focused my work.

I don’t have subscriptions to any of the online “pay” genealogy sites, so thought I’d work with what I could. I started on HeritageQuest – which I can access from home thanks to my local library. I wanted to find every single census record I could that included a member of the Goul family in order to “source” it in my family file.

While doing so, I ran across “extra” Goul folks so added them into the family file as non-related people just in case. The documentation took quite a bit of time. Not only did I add the information on where everyone was in the Census records but the Series, Roll and page numbers.

After I finished with HeritageQuest, I went to FamilySearch labs and entered information I found from there. Then on to Rootsweb family trees and the Social Security Death Index. Then I did a Google search to see what “distant” cousins had entered.

In the middle of all of this, I received an email from a distant cousin – one who had posted some queries awhile back to one of the message boards. We wrote back and forth and she mentioned that she had some things to mail to me. I received the package on Saturday and it was a rather large package with quite a few family group sheets, copies of letters she had received from another distant cousin (who has since passed away). One of the letters was actually a letter written to this other cousin that he had sent to her, and you’ll never believe who the author of that letter was – my grandfather! Talk about the “circle of genealogy”! This is the second time a cousin has sent me copies of letters my grandfather had written to other people.

My week’s worth of work has been very productive and successful. I’ve been able to attach some of those non-related people to my line.

Even though I’ve used every combination of spellings to find the Goul family in the census, I’m not quite done. I’ve located them under the variations of Coul, Gowl, Gaul, Gowell, and Goule. But I’m sure there’s more!